


Blood Loss

by waltzmatildah



Category: Savages (2012), Savages - All Media Types, Savages Series - Don Winslow
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:53:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chon comes home... [set pre-movie]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>(look close enough and you'll see</i><br/><i>there are scars there too...)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Loss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queenie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenie/gifts).



1

  
         They fuck.

 

 

 

 

2

  
It’s a Tuesday when Chon comes home and there’s no fanfare. No _Chariots of Fire_ -esque slomos carried out around the looping baggage claim conveyer. No carefully scribed _Welcome Back_ banners erected over doorways or falsely cheerful balloons tied to the front fence. _Congratulations on not getting your head blown off!! Kudos to you, my friend!!_

         You’d probably have to pre-order balloons like that. And it’s not like Chon sends an SMS to let them know he’s coming.

He knocks on the door.

Someone – usually O – opens it.

(And then they fuck.)

 

 

 

 

3

Sometimes they make it to the bed

          to _a_ bed

Sometimes they don’t.

Ben likes to watch and maybe that’s weird (that _is_ weird, considering...), but relief and desperation and anger and fear and a thousand other silent adjectives play out in the moment and 

          Ben likes to watch.

 

 

 

 

4

Don’t misunderstand the implication here though; this is not a regular occurrence, Chon’s sudden return from Afghanistan or Iraq or some other middle-eastern sand trap where the heat could never hope to be as oppressive as the faux-ruling parties already are. But that’s not to say the event isn’t still worthy of a mention.

Several mentions even.

Ben, from the doorway, and O, from where she’s straddled over dirty knees, already undressing (already undressed), start new inventories of damages done. The ones you can’t see (indelible ink – and it’s a good word, _indelible_ ).

          The ones you can’t miss.

This time there’s a barely scabbed over tear in the skin across his left hip, stitched crudely, disappearing beneath him in one direction and curving down towards his thigh in the other. Vicious, angry red bleeds into blue-black bruising, still fresh. It can’t be more than a week old, max. O can sense the moment that Ben clocks the damage because the air in the room thins out just a little more and Chon’s eyes, already slammed shut, are suddenly covered by the crook of his bent elbow.

 

 

 

 

5

          (look close enough and you’ll see  
          there are scars there too...)

 

 

 

 

6

O makes breakfast

And by that it’s meant: O shimmies into yesterday’s underwear, yesterday’s lilac sundress, yesterday’s still sandy flip-flops, and buys croissants and chocolate milk from Scandia on Forest Avenue.

Chon lets the familiar pull of the ocean drag him under and out and out and under, and Ben pretends not to keep watch from his spot on the shore where he’s also pretending not to be standing guard.

          Watching-  
                    waiting-  
                              holding his breath.

Ben will pretend for three days (maybe four). He understands skittish. And he understands Chon. 

          Three days (maybe four) is usually long enough.

 

 

 

 

7

Ben’s been working on a new variation of their ‘product’. He’s always at his most productive when Chon is away.

          O shops.

_O always shops_. But she pauses for just long enough between transactions to ensure Ben is kept well informed. His own private Al Jazeera hot-line.

          _Suicide bombers have attacked a compound in Jalalabad..._ Ben reads.  
          _He’s in Iraq this time..._ Ben replies.  
          _I know that... but still..._ Ben reads.  
          (but still).

Yeah, but still.

And so he works. 

Ben’s working title for the new mix is Frank (as in, Sinatra). Smooth. Too smooth for its own good. The hooch equivalent of vintage malt.

O rolls her eyes seven times during his three sentence explanation. A record? Probably not.

          “The Boob,” she says. And _what_?

          “You need to move into the twenty first century, Ben.” Her tongue laps at his earlobe, her hands in his hair, caught tight in the knots. 

Caught tight in him.

A metaphor perhaps. Blinding.

          “No one cares about Sinatra anymore, babe.”

 

 

 

 

8

          _16 people dead in Karbala bombing…_ Ben reads.  
          (but still).

 

 

 

 

9

Chon screams in his sleep. Wakes up with his back to the bedroom wall, bug-eyed and sweat soaked. One loud bang away from complete oblivion. O drags the sheets and pillows from the bed and curls up next to him on the floor, whispers words and sounds and vowels and consonants and everything and nothing and all the _things_ that might come in between. Ben lays awake and listens to the both of them breathe.

          Breathe, breathe  
                    ... breathe

Later, O makes awkward jokes about PTLOSD and pretends not to notice how Chon still can’t comfortably put all his weight on his left leg.

          Ben gives them three days (maybe four).

          Everything’s fine  
          Nothing to see here.

          Pretend.

 

 

 

 

10

There’d been an IFED.

(An IfuckingED).

But this is not a headline. Not anymore.

 

 

 

 

11

The movement of the earth had registered first

          Sound was second  
          Heat was third  
          Agony? That didn’t come ‘til much later (Please note: this is a lie.  
                                                  But we’ll run with it for now).  
          Everything’s fine  
          Nothing to see here  
          All that jazz

So, where were we? Oh. The earth had moved. As in, literally, the earth beneath his feet had up and moved. Well, up and out to be accurate. Very fucking far up and very fucking far out. He’d been in a group of seven. When the dust and the sand and the body fluids had finally settled again they were down to three and half. That he could see. And Han Solo (Chon had no fucking clue what the dude’s real name was) had become Han Duo

          Han Trio

Chon had vomited. And it wasn’t until he’d been straightening back up, hands over his ears for no real reason other than to drown out the blood numbing screams (which, well, a fucking good reason, you’d have to admit), that he’d noticed his pants were gone. As in, he may as well have not bothered getting dressed that morning, that’s how gone his pants were. Also, his hip bone, beneath torn skin and blood and muscle and what remained of the top part of his leg, was really, really fucking _white_.

 

 

 

 

12

After that he’d thought

          great fucking time for a nap.

He’d woken up rolled to the side of a make-shift stretcher, the sky above him, blue. Pacific coast blue. 

It had not been the Pacific coast.

 

 

 

 

13

Chon doesn’t think he’ll tell the others this part of his story.

 

 

 

 

14

He says

          “You know, I think it was even hotter there this time...”

          “Global warming.”

Ben, with a sigh and a nod like he knows. 

O raises her eyebrows above the lip of her wine glass. Thinks absently, and not for the first time, that for someone with psychotherapists for parents, Ben can be pretty damn clueless sometimes. 

          But

          Ben waits

          Three days (maybe four).

 

 

 

 

15

There’s blood on the sheets.

Ben throws them out.

O buys new ones. Re-makes their bed (rinse and repeat).

 

 

 

 

16

Chon apologises (for everything – for the blood, for the silence, for the screams) around a steady exhale, loops the medical grade mary jay smoke into lazy rings above their heads so that he doesn’t have to look at them while they process his words. Fingers snake around his ankle and he knows they belong to O without having to double check.

A tension he must admit to barely having noticed previously lifts in the wake. He’s surprised, but he shouldn’t be.

This is how it always goes, after all.

And it’s been three days now (maybe four).

 

 

 

 

17

          “So,” says O.

          La

          Ti

          Do

 

 

 

 

18

It’s Tuesday again now.

There’s a bag packed at the end of the bed. An explanation without need for words. Ben is off to save the world.

Again.

Chon shrugs his shoulders, like maybe it’s fine with him. (It’s not, but…)

          “Ask him to stay,” says O.

Chon raises his eyebrows this time because…

          “Okay,” she concedes. Blinks. Reconsiders. “Tell him not to go.”

Like maybe they’re the same thing. (They’re not, but…)

 

 

 

 

19

When Ben leaves home, there’s a farewell extravaganza that spills over into tearful goodbyes and legs wrapped around hips in the too crowded departure lounge. O has a balloon tied to her left wrist, the string tangled up and around her arm, proclaiming ‘Happy Birthday’ in stretched white letters.

(It was the best she could do on short notice.)

          “Hey,” Ben says; his lips against her ear and his eyes locked tight on Chon. “I’ll be coming back.”

Like it’s a statement of fact.

But they all know too well…

 

 

 

 

20

                    _these things rarely are._


End file.
